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Re: [compost_tea] Re: quantities ?
The reason you don't need huge amounts of compost is that we just need to get an inoculum of the good guys. Then we want to grow the organisms we've extracted.
There's enough soluble nutrients in the small amount of compost to get a decent amount of growth without addition of much.
We help things along a bit by adding foods that help the critters we want more of. So, we don't add white sugar to the brews because that is too limited a food resource - just sucrose.
We add molasses. We've already had the discussion about the breadth of different kinds of sugars and some humic material in molasses. Or add fruit juice. Diversity of foods.
We add fish hydrolysate, soybean meal, humic acids (how many kinds of humic acids? Thousands. I have to laugh at products that say they have three humic acids in their material. Right. Would I buy that stuff? Who are you feeding?)
We add materials that are very complex to feed the organisms we know are beneficial. We aren't adding foods that help the bad guys.
If you have tons of compost, then put the compost out on your field. You get the inoculum, the soluble materials and the long-term not-soluble material.
If you don't have enough compost, then you make tea.
If you don't have enough good compost, then you make tea and add those foods that grow the beneficial, keeping the not-so-good-guys in low numbers. And turn your not-so-good compost into good compost.
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
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